Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Jam roly poly

Here is a Guardian recipe by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall for a baked jam roly poly (scroll down). It involves the proportions -- two parts flour to one part suet -- that you would use in a dumpling. But the dough should not be as moist as dumpling dough. Be careful, is my advice: you find, as you do when making pastry, that at one moment the dough will not cohere, and that at the next moment, after you've added more water, it's soggy.

My roly poly was a sticky mass, which collapsed, leaking jam, when I attempted to roll it. It was perfectly edible, though -- but, again like over-moistened pastry, tougher than it should have been.

I was pleased to learn, from Nikki Duffy's accompanying Source It column, that the Atora Light suet in my roly poly contained no hydrogenated fat.

4 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Sorry to say, you need to be more sceptical... Atora light contains 47% hydrogenated vegetable oil according to the label on the packet I have and the two I looked at in different supermarkets this week.

I just bought some Atora Light (December 07) and hydrogenated fat is not mentioned in the ingredients. I rang Atora's helpline and they said that according to their technical people the product no longer contains any oil which is hydrogenated. Do I believe them?

About Me

I am the author of a cookbook, Don't Sweat the Aubergine (Short Books). I have been food columnist for the New Statesman; and I write book reviews, and articles about books and the books industry, for papers including The Times, Guardian, Bookseller, and Times Literary Supplement. I am the joint editor, with Liz Thomson, of a book industry news service, BookBrunch.
I have also written Eclipse: The Story of the Rogue, the Madam and the Horse That Changed Racing. It was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, and won me the Best New Writer prize at the British Sports Book Awards.
My books: www.nicholasclee.co.uk